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This story is insane and infuriating. The police had no need to destroy the house. They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he r

This story is insane and infuriating. The police had no need to destroy the house. They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he ran out of food. This could be expedited by cutting the water to the house so the suspect had nothing to drink. This would probably be cheaper for the police in the end anyways as the extra few days of salary are offset by not having to use and pay for "tear gas, robots and police negotiations". The homeowner deserves to be made whole and I think that should be the police departments responsibility, in order to encourage alternative approaches when possible.

stanski 7y ago
But where's the fun in that? Gotta get to use all that weaponry after all.
- synlatexc 7y ago
  Exactly. Recall an NYT article[1] on the topic. It describes how police chiefs will make a spectacle out of their newly purchased tanks or whatever, even bringing them to schools for kids to check out. Best quote was from a police chief who hadn't been swept up in the mania for military gear and vehicles: “I go to schools,” he said. “But I bring ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’” [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-poli...
magashna 7y ago
All for what, maybe $40-60 in 1 shirt and 1 belt? 19 hours of police OT, paying for all their toys, this ongoing legal battle. Insanity
- fortran77 7y ago
  It was an _armed_ robbery. That's a very serious crime. Not "shoplifting".
  - shantly 7y ago
    It seems like the gun was present for but not used during (even to threaten) the crime, which doesn't change the fact that he was armed while shoplifting or that he was probably a dangerous dude to be around, but does make it a bit different from a guy waving a gun around in a store while robbing it. I mean, does getting away with one belt and one shirt sound like something someone drew a gun to do? That's some comically bad armed robbery if so.
    - fortran77 7y ago
      In California, and probably the rest of the Nation, just carrying a gun during a robbery makes it an "armed robbery." (And for good reason, too.)
- dr-detroit 7y ago
  Any neighborhood with $2million homes behind gated community barriers like Greenwood has cops who will shoot at shoplifters and roust bums (jail them and or drive them to the designated poor people zone).
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  >All for what, maybe $40-60 in 1 shirt and 1 belt? No the use of force was in response to the guy opening fire on the police.
zdragnar 7y ago
Just to play devil's advocate: The guy involved led the police on a high-speed carchase, and fired his gun at them from the garage of the home when they arrived. He definitely posed a threat, both to police and innocent people around him (from the car chase, etc) As it was, the siege took 19 hours. It could easily have taken days or weeks to starve him out if the family had emergency rations stocked up (i.e. winter power blackouts, etc). How many police officers would have to have camped out to make sure he didn't escape? What would that do to people who might otherwise have needed those police officers elsewhere in the city? To be clear, I don't know that I find any of those arguments convincing or sufficient justification. He had homeowner's insurance, and the city offered to cover the deductible and provide rental assistance. Nothing will be enough to make up for irreplaceable items, trauma or time lost. Hindsight is 20/20, but in the moment, would it really have been the right call to tie up the police and SWAT for a week or more when they might be needed elsewhere?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dragontamer 7y ago
> They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he ran out of food. Both 2nd amendment activists and anti-gun people make the same mistake here: the physical presence of a gun changes everything. Guns favor the offense, not the defense. The solution is always the same: if the opponent has a weapon, you bring bigger weapons to subjugate them. APCs will allow you to move forward without risk of getting shot at, while heavy weapons like grenades and rocket-launchers destroy the cover and concealment of the defender. The first step is recognizing the root of the problem. The handgun. Remove the gun, and the heavy-weapons wouldn't have been necessary. But as long as the general citizenry has access to firearms, it is necessary to give bigger and better weapons to law enforcement. ---------- Consider this: how would YOU form a perimeter around the house safely and effectively? An APC is the natural weapon: thick plate to provide immunity to small-weapons like handguns. If the local police only has one APC however, that's not enough to form an effective perimeter: you can only cover one side of the house. So you put men around the house, and hope that they don't get shot. And those men remain at risk throughout the duration of the siege. Thick body-armor doesn't protect the head, and it still gets hurt to get shot at.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  >And those men remain at risk throughout the duration of the siege. It's almost like police officers signed up for a career that puts them at risk. They need to accept this risk and act like more civil servants than bullies with dangerous toys. There also needs to be more focus on deescalation than "fuck it let's just bomb him" which would also make officers much more safe.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    > It's almost like police officers signed up for a career that puts them at risk. That's how you lose Police Officers. Workers prefer to work in safer jobs, and are even willing to take pay-cuts to work in a safer area. A US-police department is in constant competition with rival cities for the same pool of applicants. If your local police department gets a reputation of not backing its officers, your officers will LEAVE to other cities. Period. There's a reason why all cities back their Police Departments with as much support as possible. Its a necessary part of attracting the best candidates. Some Police Officers have degrees in criminal law theory, college-educated. Other police officers are just high-school graduates with some muscle. When police departments struggle, they lose the higher-quality officers to their local rivals. Which means either fewer officers, or being forced to hire low-quality officers. ------------- The fundamental issue here is that Police Departments are too small, making the politics of "local rivals" a toxic culture. Police departments need to be forced to merge together and cover larger areas. A nation-wide police force would probably be too big, but we can start by eradicating all town-level police forces (less than 20,000 citizens) and merging them into a larger regional area. As long as there are Police Departments that only protect $1-Million homes (where virtually no crimes are committed), you'll have the quality Police Officers leaving the dangerous areas where they're needed (ie: typical inner cities) and working to move towards the richer areas. You gotta fix the fundamental politics: the underlying driver of the culture.
Carpetsmoker 7y ago
The entire situation of a "high-speed chase" followed by such a stand-off for shoplifting a shirt seems ridiculous to me. I don't want to defend the shoplifter here, but the reality is that these kind of chases and stand-offs come with real risk of injury and death to innocents. The police should be wiser than pursue at all costs for such petty crimes.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  The issue isn't that he stole a shirt, the issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. edit: I'm not sympathizing with cops or trying to say the use of force here was justified (it wasn't). I'm just saying we need to make attempts to pursue (within reason)
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not claiming the police should just give up once someone runs, but there is a cost/benefit ratio to these things, and endangering random people in a high-speed car chase to catch a shoplifter does not seem a good cost/benefit ratio. It's also hardly the case that you can just "run and you're home free". There is CCTV, license plates, the guy can be caught next time he shoplifts, etc. etc. There is more than one way to catch criminals than this kind of brute force.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.
throwaway_law 7y ago
>The homeowner deserves to be made whole and I think that should be the police departments responsibility... It sounds like the homeowner was likely made whole by their insurance company, the article hints that the home was insured and the Police department paid for both temporary housing and the insurance deductible. It is unknown, but in all likelihood the homeowner probably got the full policy limits on the insurance claim. Then, either: a) the insurance limits didn't cover the full amount of damages and they sued for the difference (and additional damages); or b) the insurer was behind the suit in a subrogation claim against the Police station for the claim amount. One of the problems with insurance cases is your not allowed to talk about the insurance companies. Nevertheless believe it or not these kinds of cases (house destroyed in emergency responses) are quite common, but usually it has to do with fires (not armed police chases of criminals) where in order to stop fires from spreading from house to house a team of firefighters may purposely damage/destroy houses that are not on fire to prevent the lateral spread of the fire. Of course homeowners/their insurers sue the Fire departments with similar outcomes to this case. >This story is insane and infuriating. Losing a family home/all your belongings can't be minimized, but as a kidnapping victim myself, I also want to point out the gunman broke into a home where a 9 year old boy was alone and the boy was permitted to leave unharmed. Consider the guy blindly opened fire on the police, things could have been a lot worse had he kept the boy.
- fortran77 7y ago
  > Consider the guy blindly opened fire on the police, things could have been a lot worse had he kept the boy. Exactly right. I'm shocked and saddened that the Hacker News community has reduced this to a "shoplifting."
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    Plus down voting to censor truth rather responding or acknowledging the fact the home was insured and the Police paid the insurance deductible.
    - shantly 7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
>This story is insane and infuriating. The police had no need to destroy the house. They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he ran out of food. That's how it was done in my country at least in a famous case back a couple decades ago...

stanski 7y ago

But where's the fun in that? Gotta get to use all that weaponry after all.

synlatexc 7y ago
Exactly. Recall an NYT article[1] on the topic. It describes how police chiefs will make a spectacle out of their newly purchased tanks or whatever, even bringing them to schools for kids to check out. Best quote was from a police chief who hadn't been swept up in the mania for military gear and vehicles: “I go to schools,” he said. “But I bring ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’” [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-poli...

magashna 7y ago

All for what, maybe $40-60 in 1 shirt and 1 belt? 19 hours of police OT, paying for all their toys, this ongoing legal battle. Insanity

fortran77 7y ago
It was an _armed_ robbery. That's a very serious crime. Not "shoplifting".
- shantly 7y ago
  It seems like the gun was present for but not used during (even to threaten) the crime, which doesn't change the fact that he was armed while shoplifting or that he was probably a dangerous dude to be around, but does make it a bit different from a guy waving a gun around in a store while robbing it. I mean, does getting away with one belt and one shirt sound like something someone drew a gun to do? That's some comically bad armed robbery if so.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    In California, and probably the rest of the Nation, just carrying a gun during a robbery makes it an "armed robbery." (And for good reason, too.)
dr-detroit 7y ago
Any neighborhood with $2million homes behind gated community barriers like Greenwood has cops who will shoot at shoplifters and roust bums (jail them and or drive them to the designated poor people zone).
throwaway_law 7y ago
>All for what, maybe $40-60 in 1 shirt and 1 belt? No the use of force was in response to the guy opening fire on the police.

zdragnar 7y ago

Just to play devil's advocate: The guy involved led the police on a high-speed carchase, and fired his gun at them from the garage of the home when they arrived. He definitely posed a threat, both to police and innocent people around him (from the car chase, etc) As it was, the siege took 19 hours. It could easily have taken days or weeks to starve him out if the family had emergency rations stocked up (i.e. winter power blackouts, etc). How many police officers would have to have camped out to make sure he didn't escape? What would that do to people who might otherwise have needed those police officers elsewhere in the city? To be clear, I don't know that I find any of those arguments convincing or sufficient justification. He had homeowner's insurance, and the city offered to cover the deductible and provide rental assistance. Nothing will be enough to make up for irreplaceable items, trauma or time lost. Hindsight is 20/20, but in the moment, would it really have been the right call to tie up the police and SWAT for a week or more when they might be needed elsewhere?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dragontamer 7y ago

> They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he ran out of food. Both 2nd amendment activists and anti-gun people make the same mistake here: the physical presence of a gun changes everything. Guns favor the offense, not the defense. The solution is always the same: if the opponent has a weapon, you bring bigger weapons to subjugate them. APCs will allow you to move forward without risk of getting shot at, while heavy weapons like grenades and rocket-launchers destroy the cover and concealment of the defender. The first step is recognizing the root of the problem. The handgun. Remove the gun, and the heavy-weapons wouldn't have been necessary. But as long as the general citizenry has access to firearms, it is necessary to give bigger and better weapons to law enforcement. ---------- Consider this: how would YOU form a perimeter around the house safely and effectively? An APC is the natural weapon: thick plate to provide immunity to small-weapons like handguns. If the local police only has one APC however, that's not enough to form an effective perimeter: you can only cover one side of the house. So you put men around the house, and hope that they don't get shot. And those men remain at risk throughout the duration of the siege. Thick body-armor doesn't protect the head, and it still gets hurt to get shot at.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
>And those men remain at risk throughout the duration of the siege. It's almost like police officers signed up for a career that puts them at risk. They need to accept this risk and act like more civil servants than bullies with dangerous toys. There also needs to be more focus on deescalation than "fuck it let's just bomb him" which would also make officers much more safe.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  > It's almost like police officers signed up for a career that puts them at risk. That's how you lose Police Officers. Workers prefer to work in safer jobs, and are even willing to take pay-cuts to work in a safer area. A US-police department is in constant competition with rival cities for the same pool of applicants. If your local police department gets a reputation of not backing its officers, your officers will LEAVE to other cities. Period. There's a reason why all cities back their Police Departments with as much support as possible. Its a necessary part of attracting the best candidates. Some Police Officers have degrees in criminal law theory, college-educated. Other police officers are just high-school graduates with some muscle. When police departments struggle, they lose the higher-quality officers to their local rivals. Which means either fewer officers, or being forced to hire low-quality officers. ------------- The fundamental issue here is that Police Departments are too small, making the politics of "local rivals" a toxic culture. Police departments need to be forced to merge together and cover larger areas. A nation-wide police force would probably be too big, but we can start by eradicating all town-level police forces (less than 20,000 citizens) and merging them into a larger regional area. As long as there are Police Departments that only protect $1-Million homes (where virtually no crimes are committed), you'll have the quality Police Officers leaving the dangerous areas where they're needed (ie: typical inner cities) and working to move towards the richer areas. You gotta fix the fundamental politics: the underlying driver of the culture.

Carpetsmoker 7y ago

The entire situation of a "high-speed chase" followed by such a stand-off for shoplifting a shirt seems ridiculous to me. I don't want to defend the shoplifter here, but the reality is that these kind of chases and stand-offs come with real risk of injury and death to innocents. The police should be wiser than pursue at all costs for such petty crimes.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
The issue isn't that he stole a shirt, the issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. edit: I'm not sympathizing with cops or trying to say the use of force here was justified (it wasn't). I'm just saying we need to make attempts to pursue (within reason)
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not claiming the police should just give up once someone runs, but there is a cost/benefit ratio to these things, and endangering random people in a high-speed car chase to catch a shoplifter does not seem a good cost/benefit ratio. It's also hardly the case that you can just "run and you're home free". There is CCTV, license plates, the guy can be caught next time he shoplifts, etc. etc. There is more than one way to catch criminals than this kind of brute force.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.

throwaway_law 7y ago

>The homeowner deserves to be made whole and I think that should be the police departments responsibility... It sounds like the homeowner was likely made whole by their insurance company, the article hints that the home was insured and the Police department paid for both temporary housing and the insurance deductible. It is unknown, but in all likelihood the homeowner probably got the full policy limits on the insurance claim. Then, either: a) the insurance limits didn't cover the full amount of damages and they sued for the difference (and additional damages); or b) the insurer was behind the suit in a subrogation claim against the Police station for the claim amount. One of the problems with insurance cases is your not allowed to talk about the insurance companies. Nevertheless believe it or not these kinds of cases (house destroyed in emergency responses) are quite common, but usually it has to do with fires (not armed police chases of criminals) where in order to stop fires from spreading from house to house a team of firefighters may purposely damage/destroy houses that are not on fire to prevent the lateral spread of the fire. Of course homeowners/their insurers sue the Fire departments with similar outcomes to this case. >This story is insane and infuriating. Losing a family home/all your belongings can't be minimized, but as a kidnapping victim myself, I also want to point out the gunman broke into a home where a 9 year old boy was alone and the boy was permitted to leave unharmed. Consider the guy blindly opened fire on the police, things could have been a lot worse had he kept the boy.

fortran77 7y ago
> Consider the guy blindly opened fire on the police, things could have been a lot worse had he kept the boy. Exactly right. I'm shocked and saddened that the Hacker News community has reduced this to a "shoplifting."
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  Plus down voting to censor truth rather responding or acknowledging the fact the home was insured and the Police paid the insurance deductible.
  - shantly 7y ago

coldtea 7y ago

>This story is insane and infuriating. The police had no need to destroy the house. They could have "sieged" the house and waited for him to come out when he ran out of food. That's how it was done in my country at least in a famous case back a couple decades ago...